Demjanjuk appeals deportation

Demjanjuk, 87, is appealing a 2005 ruling that he should be deported from the United States to his native Ukraine. Demjanjuk’s lawyer says Demjanjuk believes he will be tortured in the Ukraine.

On Thursday a three-judge panel from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati heard arguments on Demjanjuk’s appeal of the final removal order. A ruling is expected in several months.

The U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals in December 2006 upheld the deportation order, ordered nearly 30 years after the U.S. government began deportation proceedings against Demjanjuk for lying about his Nazi past when entering the country after World War II.

Demjanjuk, a resident of the Cleveland suburb Seven Hills, was extradited to Israel and eventually exonerated in 1993 of being the sadistic Treblinka concentration camp guard “Ivan the Terrible.” He is being deported based on what courts have called “overwhelming evidence” that he was a guard, but not “Ivan.”